


Musing on Mortality

by Setcheti



Series: Tremors: the Subtext [8]
Category: Tremors: The Series
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They went from birth to extinction in a single day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musing on Mortality

Burt turned the little cube of clear Lucite over in his fingers, examining the bug trapped inside it for the fiftieth time.  It was an earthworm…mostly.  It just happened to have legs like a grasshopper sprouting from its segmented pinkish body.  Other than that, it was a perfectly ordinary little worm.  Mixmaster strikes again.  This time, though, Mixmaster hadn’t struck cleanly.

Cletus had warned them that most of the mutations would die, leaving a relative few to be dealt with in the valley.  Genetic splicing was messy, he’d said, and the majority of creatures created that way couldn’t survive.  This was just the first time Burt had ever watched such an extinction in action.

He and Tyler had come across the first worm by accident; it had hit their windshield and not quite splattered enough to keep them from seeing that it was…wrong.  So they’d stopped, armed themselves, and started scouting around the immediate area.  It hadn’t taken them long to find the rest, a little pocket of mutations dying there in the middle of the desert.  The whole cluster, once dug up, had only been about the size of a bucket.  Most of the worms had died where they were born, trapped by packed earth, a few stronger ones had managed to make it to the surface only to die there, baked dry by the fierce desert sun because their grasshopper legs prevented them from burrowing back into the protective soil that would have shielded their fragile soft bodies.  Tyler had carefully transferred the five that were still moving into a jar while Burt secured all they’d dug up in a plastic tarp and then they’d marked the spot for later examination and taken the whole mess back to Casey at the lab.

Wormhoppers.  That’s what Tyler had called them, Wormhoppers.

The two of them had been lucky to see the things at all, as it turned out; another hour and the little mutant bugs would have been gone, dried up and their corpses eaten to unidentifiable remnants by hardier insects.  The Wormhoppers had been born and become extinct in a single day, never to be seen again.  There weren’t any more, not anywhere they’d checked.  Roger had come with them out to the site, and he’d surmised that a grasshopper contaminated with Mixmaster must have died there and disintegrated into the soil, which was then processed by a few worms who in consequence produced a single generation of doomed Wormhoppers.

Burt put the cube down, not liking the way the eyeless little bug stared at him.  Tyler had preserved this one for him with great care, embedding it in the little paperweight in a very lifelike position.  “We don’t want to forget them,” he’d said, shrugging.  “Probably the first mutation we’ve come across out here that wasn’t dangerous, you almost feel sorry for the little guys.”

Finding the dying bugs had affected Tyler too, Burt knew.  They’d just cuddled that night – not that Burt was complaining about that, no sir – and the next day his lover had presented him with the paperweight.  Burt hadn’t showed it to Nancy or Jodi, he didn’t want to share – and he was afraid they’d push Tyler to make paperweights for the tourists if they saw how good the former NASCAR driver was at encasing things in Lucite, and Burt didn’t think Tyler would want to do that.  This little work of art had been made just for him…because Tyler loved him, and because they’d both gotten ridiculously sentimental over a bucketful of dead mutated bugs.  No, he didn’t want to share that with anyone else.  And he didn’t have to, so he wasn’t going to.  Tyler was his.

He touched the cube again lightly, trying not to think about mortality.  Maybe that was the other reason he couldn’t look at the preserved Wormhopper for too long and yet couldn’t seem to leave it alone.  Three weeks ago he could very easily have lost Tyler to that patch of mutated weeds and their pernicious pollen, another mutation that very definitely had been dangerous; the fear he’d felt when his lover had spiked such a high fever at Nancy’s house had surprised him, even shocked him, with its intensity.  And no amount of cold water or ice had done a thing to reduce the heat or wake Tyler up – they’d been just about to consider going to the hospital when the fever had disappeared as suddenly as it had come on, and five minutes later Tyler had been awake and confused as to what all the fuss was about.  Burt was still shakily thankful that Casey had been able to find an antidote…and still pragmatic enough to know that next time they might not be so lucky.

For all his going on over the past years about the danger of the mutations in Perfection Valley, about how it was kill or be killed, about how easily they could wipe out the human race, some part of him had still firmly albeit secretly believed that the good guys would win and the monsters would always lose.  Even the death toll the valley had racked up over the years hadn’t stripped that away from him…but this had.  And the death of the Wormhoppers had clinched it.  Humanity wasn’t permanent.

A hand descended on Burt’s shoulder, not quite startling him.  “That’s a good way to get killed, you know,” he observed dryly.

“You knew it was me.”  Tyler’s hand drifted down his shoulder and rubbed the flannel of his shirt.  “Problem?”

“Just thinking.”  Burt lifted the cube, holding it up to the light so the Wormhopper had a halo conferred upon it.  “We could be wiped out just this easily, you know.”

The hand became an arm became a hug, and warm breath brushed his ear.  “Nope, I don’t know – because we’re the good guys, and the good guys always win, remember?  Now are you comin’ to bed or is this chair up to a workout?”

Burt smiled.  Leave it to Tyler to be keeping his optimism for him.  “I thought you said we couldn’t fool around out here because I’d always have one eye on the monitor?”

“I’ll take what I can get.”  Tyler kissed his ear, then straightened up and pulled away.  “You comin’?”

Burt stood up too, taking one more look at the Wormhopper and then shrugging to himself.  Mortality could wait.  Right now…Tyler was his.  And he wasn’t going to waste any more time tonight when he could be proving it.


End file.
